I think the confusion around the word bug is a specific problem among English speaking people. While the word "bug" is legit term for a whole family of insects, its also used commonly for basically all - and mainly unwanted - insects in general.
In German for example we don't have that problem really. The german word for "bug" (real bugs) is "Wanze", while beetles are "Käfer". It's not common to call all insects "Wanze" here.
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And I think that the lax common usage of the word "bug" is the result of the fact that the big majority of people neither know nor care about the differences between various insect taxa - and if they are the same anyway, it doesn't matter whether to call them bugs, beetles or whatever.
It may be right that many English speaking people are using the word "bug" for all insects, but neverthelss, you will always find "beetle" connected with the scientific term "Coleoptera" and "bug" with "Heteroptera" in specialist books.
Apart from that, whenever possible I prefer the usage of the scientific names (here: "Coleoptera" and "Heteroptera") of the various taxa because they are more accurate and unambiguous. However, when writing here I have to make some compromises so that every reader can understand what I mean.
Finally, my painful experience (in general but also every single day here in "Fascinating Insects") tells me that confusing bugs with beetles is far from being a linguistic problem only. Most people simply don't know the differences between the various insect taxa, which means that an article like this one is really urgently needed.
thats totally my case. I didnt cared (well, as a non native speaker, sometimes I simply do not see difference in semantics). but i will happily educate myself. THX!
Sure a valid point, but the thing is, that in English the word bug has this two ways of being used. Also in Germany there are a lot of people who have no clue about the different insects. May be they know a house fly and a wasp and a spider. But they won't call everything else Wanze, or Käfer. They might say Viecher (critters) or something like that.
Then just let's say that calling everything a "bug" is the elegant way of English native speakers to 'solve' the problem not to know anything about insects (don't take that interpretation too serious). :)
Anyway, thanks for pointing out that phenomenon.
haha, elegant' - indeed. like one can use word 'gonna' and gave up and add any grammatical constructions he'd like to, afterwards
:P
lol